Power density in plasma processing equipment, such as equipment designed to perform plasma etching of microelectronic devices and the like, is increasing with the advancement in fabrication techniques. For example, powers of 5 to 10 kilowatts are now in use for 300 mm substrates. With the increased power densities, enhanced cooling of a pedestal supporting a workpiece is beneficial during processing to control the temperature of the workpiece uniformly. Existing methods of cooling during plasma processing can only achieve a certain level of cooling of a workpiece, which may be insufficient for some processing environments. One such method is to circulate fluid through a channel at the bottom of an electrostatic chuck so that the fluid flows through the channel and thus travels parallelly to the chuck's surface. Thermal non-uniformities occurring on a workpiece due to insufficient cooling during processing cannot be sufficiently compensated for with other hardware and process tuning, and can affect on-wafer performance.